Afghan President Ashraf Ghani described levels of sexual harassment in schools as “shocking.” He ordered the Ministry of Education to report every incident of sexual harassment in schools to enable action against harassers, and directed relevant ministries to develop a plan to counter sexual harassment in educational institutions.
The situation for Afghan girls and women remains deplorable, despite concerted efforts to improve their freedoms, rights, and quality of life. In a June 2011 global survey, Afghanistan was named as the “world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman.” Afghan girls and women suffer from appalling acts of violence, abuse, threats, sexual harassment, and repression. Many crimes go unreported, but even the data that exist are alarming.
The violence against women can occur in both public and private spheres of life and at any time of their life span. Many women are terrified by these threats of violence and this essentially has an impact on their lives that they are impeded to exercise their human rights. Honor killings are a common form of violence against women in certain parts of the world especially in our country. In honor killings, women and girls are killed by family members because the women are believed to have brought shame or dishonor upon the family.
These killings are a traditional practice, believed to have originated from tribal customs where an allegation against a woman can be enough to defile a family’s reputation. Women are killed for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by their relatives, attempting to leave a marriage, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate.
Sexual harassment is a major problem in Afghanistan, where women and girls have to struggle to regain their rights after being completely shut out of education and employment during Taliban rule until their ouster in 2001. There has been significant progress in improving girls’ access to education and integrating women into the Afghan parliament and civil service but unchecked sexual harassment has been a significant obstacle to women’s employment and participation in public life.Prior to the fall of the Taliban in 2001, women’s access to public space was severely restricted by the Taliban’s policies of not allowing women to leave the home without a male chaperone and not allowing women to work outside the home.
Women who did not abide by these discriminatory practices were subjected to public beatings, threats and imprisonment. There were no reported legal restrictions on women’s access to public space at the time of drafting. However, as noted in the physical integrity section, although the restrictive practices of the Taliban regime have been lifted, women’s freedom of movement continues to be hindered by threats of violence. Further, social custom continues to limit many women’s freedom of movement without male consent or chaperone.
Sexual harassment within the workplace, including in government, is an especially serious problem, Human Rights Watch said. Government institutions have made almost no effort to prohibit harassment and assist victims.Sexual harassment is pervasive in the country’s larger cities, like the capital Kabul, the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif and the western city of Herat. One NGO worker who did not wish to be named said that the harassment she faced in the capital was so extreme that she left the country in search of work elsewhere.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said.
A large part of the female workforce is employed in the government sector, but even here women are far outnumbered by their male counterpartsWomen in the police force have faced particularly high levels of harassment and at times sexual assault, exacerbated by the government’s failure to provide women with safe working conditions. Women’s justified fears of this have contributed to the country’s miniscule number of female police officers, which remains below 2 percent of the police force.As a result, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported last year that Afghan female police officers suffer from widespread sexual harassment in their workplace.
Moreover, the New York-based group said in a statement that addressing the concerns of female police officers was necessary to address the “rampant violence” against women in the country as a whole.There are a number of significant obstacles to ensuring women’s physical integrity in Afghanistan. Firstly, the large vast majority of women will not seek help because of their fears of police abuse, retaliation by perpetrators of violence and the stigma and shame from their families.
The law obliges the government to take protective and supportive measures for victims, and to educate and raise awareness about harmful traditional practices and other forms of violence against women. Prosecution offices must treat cases of violence against women as a priority and act expeditiously. To women’s unmitigated chagrin, police pay no serious attention to the victims when seeking help from them. According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW), harassment of women and girls on the street is a daily experience for Afghan women and girls. Therefore, the HRW asks the new government of Afghanistan to take urgent steps to combat sexual harassment of women in public life.
To ensure women’s safety, there is a need for investment in building the capacities of law enforcement personnel, training and awareness-raising to enable civil society organizations to monitor implementation, and education for the general public about the law and what it criminalizes.